Music is a mystery for people who play it, write it, listen to it, and write about it. The only thing I can really do when I try to say something about music is assume.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

James Dean and Opus 111

From an obituary in the New York Times:

Earlier in life Mr. Hirshbein had taken up auto racing, as a consequence of his friendship with James Dean, a racing enthusiast. The two had met when Dean was an unknown young actor.

Dean was sitting on Mr. Hirshbein’s doorstep one day listening to him practice while waiting for a neighbor to return. When Jessica Hirshbein invited him in, Dean asked Mr. Hirshbein whether he could play Beethoven’s Opus 111 Sonata.

I imagine the syncopations Dean liked are the ones that begin at 3:33 and really start to swing at 5:13 in this recording by Wilhelm Kempff, one of the rare recordings on YouTube that has the whole movement!

The triple trilling at measure 112 and after is spectacular. Given a two-movement work, 111 packs a lot of technical challenges into 9/16 and then 6/16 and 12/32 meters. What fun to revisit this thanks to the link.

I am active as a composer, a violist, a violinist, a recorder player, and as a teacher. I began my professional musical life as a flutist, and spent a lot of quality time as a baroque flutist, but both of those instruments spend their time tucked away in a drawer, while my violin, viola, and my viola d'amore are often tucked under my chin.